2 Responses

John Williams

April 29, 2016

Sent from the Library of the University of Ludong, Yantai, Shandong Province, China

The poem certainly evokes the sense of loss and presence of death: the absent birds, wildness on the retreat, the gun cartridges that symbolise man’s killing, (the only creature that kills at a distance). Interesting ending, the dogs and donkey alerted to the presence of the hunter, the killer, as he approaches.

The poem evokes peaceful but vulnerable scenes: “corn stubs…budding tees…violets..walnut shells…”. We hear how the Black Death destroyed the town already fortified to withstand attack.

On re-reading, I see how often the poem refers to the poet himself with “I…” and “me…” and realise the Romantic clichés: ” I have not heard…since childhood”, “the late March winds”, “the budding trees bright with lichen”. “As I descended the lane ” and the Wordsworthian use of the French landscape. These strain for effect, full of nostalgia. It seems ironic how the reader, like the landscape, is made vulnerable. This time by the poet to gain sympathy against encroaching death. It seems unfair to manipulate sentimentality that way, lamenting the loss of the natural order. Perhaps the most intriguing word in the poem comes in the final line, “knew”.

I wonder why there is no reference to the other bit of Wordsworth, the visionary of the “Lyrical Ballads”. It’s just what I need as I look over the sea toward NK’s missile test crash site number 3.

I’m glad the piece moved you, John, so far from home and with that fantasy empire so close – and sorry it lacks the vision these times need.
Though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time of writing, your mention of Wordsworth makes me realise that I have made an Edward Thomas use of the French landscape; Thomas with his dark edged ‘Romantic clichés’; Thomas of ‘The Owl’, of course, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/53777 and also, for instance, of ‘As The Team’s Head Brass’: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57207. The poem now seems to me almost an imitation of Thomas – which pleases me. Thank you for helping me realise that.

A small point but the erstwhile town was built to ‘subdue’ the locals not merely withstand them. It is one of a string of such fortified towns the Plantagenets (aka English) built in Gascony – as in Wales.

Good criticism is both challenging and enlightening. ‘The unexamined poem is not worth writing,’ as Socrates might have said if Plato had let him!

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NOTICE – I, DAVID JOHN BERNARD SELZER, hereby assert and give notice of my right under section 77 of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patented Act 1988 to be identified as the author of all works presented within this website.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS – Some of the poems on the website have appeared, in one form or another, in the following: A Jar Of Sticklebacks, Anglo-Welsh Review, Jabberwocky, Life Lines, Peterloo Anthology, Poetry in the Seventies, Poetry Matters. Poetry Merseyside, Meridian, Still Life, The Honest Ulsterman and the Times Literary Supplement. Some have been broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside. HERRINGS was performed at Action Transport Theatre in 2005.